The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has boasted an increase in healthcare enrollment, which is to be expected as it’s mandatory. What do those numbers look like on paper though? In Colorado alone the uninsured have been cut by more than half over the past two years. The disheartening news is that the drop is due almost entirely to a surge in Medicaid enrollment, according to Biz Journals.
The Colorado Health Institute (CHI) and The Colorado Trust released its findings from the 2015 Colorado Health Access Survey and the increase in Medicaid enrollment was one of many things the survey revealed. Another is the way that Coloradans are buying health insurance. In a once employer-sponsored dominant healthcare market it showed 42,000 fewer workers receiving health insurance from businesses of 50 or fewer employees. This is a drop of 12% from the previous year. I’m not a betting woman, but I am betting this is due to the rising cost of employer-sponsored insurance and the fact that the ACA does not require companies that employee less than 50 to offer insurance. “That does not mean that fewer small-business employees are insured, however, as many of those workers have moved from group insurance plans to individual plans or to Medicaid, whose eligibility levels were expanded by the state in 2014”, said Michele Lueck, CHI president and CEO.
Ned Calonge, president and CEO of the Colorado Trust said, “The first big intent of the Affordable Care Act was to expand coverage. It’s achieved that. Those next pieces need the coverage piece to happen in order to work on that. We’re exactly where we need to be.” The numbers are there for individuals who are enrolled in healthcare, but now the number of under-insured individual’s needs to be looked at.
All in all the ACA has done well as its first goal was to insure Americans that were uninsured or under insured. What other areas of the ACA do you see that need to be fine-tuned?
Read the full article on Biz Journals HERE.